Who’d guess the bubbly and talented landscape jeweller who greets you at her Country Lane studio is also a power-packed power-lifter? Anna Claire talks to Philip Chandler about how she got into jewellery and how she discovered powerlifting, all while raising three children
Jewellery artist and powerlifter.
Some might think those passions are diametrical ly opposed, but Queenstowner Anna Claire seamlessly straddles those two worlds.
Since moving into the Country Lane retail precinct a year ago, the 42-year-old’s morphed from a part-time to a full-time jeweller.
And, since 2015, she’s also been a competitive powerlifter, even going to world champs in Sweden, though more recently, with long Covid getting a grip on her, she’s become an international powerlifting referee.
She’s also a proud single parent, though the two eldest of her three children have left home now.
Though born in Canterbury, Claire grew up on a Western Southland farm and attended Southland Girls’ as a boarder.
Loving the arts, she applied for Otago Polytechnic’s art school, but only got in three days after her course started when another student dropped out.
She started on the fine arts side but changed to craft design from her second year.
Claire specialised in jewellery, only, for her third and fourth years, and graduated top of her class for her Bachelor of Fine Arts.
‘‘I was pregnant with my first child when I graduated,’’ she says.
After she and her then-hubby moved to Invercargill, she got a name for her landscape jewellery, sourcing stones mostly from Gemstone Beach, Orepuki, on Southland’s wild south coast.
‘‘I love the land, I feel a deep connection to the landscape.’’
Meantime, when she was 30, she spotted an ad for her local CrossFit box and, maybe be cause she was feeling restless, decided it might be fun.
Though she’d enjoyed sport, she’d ‘‘never found what I was good at’’.
That changed with CrossFit — ‘‘I found I was quite good at it’’, she says.
However, Claire wanted to compete, and because there weren’t many CrossFit comps then, took up Olympic weightlifting as well.
In no time, she was competing at the latter in the nationals, coming about fifth in her class.
Claire, who’d moved with her family to Arrowtown in 2014, says she went on to discover powerlifting by accident.
On the international stage: Anna Claire competing at the 2019 world powerlifting champs in Helsingborg, Sweden.
PICTURE: WHITE LIGHTS MEDIA
She’d been due to compete at her second Olympic weightlifting nationals, but there’d been some drama in her club so she’d decided to give it up.
Deciding to use her already-booked Auckland flight and accommodation, she was up there when she saw a powerlifting comp advertised on
Eventfinda.
‘‘So I entered and came fourth overall woman.
‘‘And then the organiser sat down beside me and said, ‘do you realise you could compete for New Zealand on those numbers?’’’
Just 11 months later, Claire was competing for NZ at the Commonwealth champs in Canada.
Subsequently, she competed in the Oceanias in Christchurch and Singapore, then in the worlds in Sweden in 2019, where she finished 20th out of 25 in her weight category.
‘‘I was delighted with that, I was so happy to be there.’’
For her first four years in the sport, Claire was the only local regularly competing in the sport, however she’s since been joined by some hotshots.
Comparing the sport to jewellery, she says ‘‘with powerlifting you lift actual numbers and you get concrete results’’.
‘‘When you’re being an artist, you’re doing your very best to do a good job, but you don’t really know you ever are.’’
Though powerlifting might appear to be all brute strength, Claire says ‘‘it’s not just training your body, you’re training your mind — you have to really, really focus’’.
Since contracting what’s be come long Covid last July, she’s put a hold on training and in stead qualified as an international referee, and is also overhauling NZ’s referee qualification system.
‘‘At Commonwealths [in Auckland last November], I got to referee some Commonwealth and world records, it was so exciting, and if I said it wasn’t good enough, they wouldn’t have got the records.’’
Claire’s also enjoying an organisational role as secretary for Southern Powerlifting, covering Otago and Southland.
A solo parent for five years now, she moved to Frankton last year into a house full of flatmates — ‘‘that’s one of the ways to make it work here’’.
She’s so grateful to jeweller Jessica Winchcombe for letting her share her Country Lane studio, and is loving the venue.
‘‘The owners are also very generous with the rent.’’
